Education Support worker jobs saved as new Liberal minister reverses predecessor's decision

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Benjamin Shingler
Telegraph-Journal

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FREDERICTON - New Education Minister Roland Haché is reversing $2.9 million in cuts to school support staff made by his predecessor Kelly Lamrock.

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Stephen MacGillivray/canadaeast News Service

Recently appointed Education Minister Roland Haché answers reporters questions Thursday after announcing that he is reversing the cuts to school support staff made as a budgetary move by his predecessor, Kelly Lamrock.

Stephen MacGillivray Photo

Brent Shaw

The decision means school districts won't have to lay off more than 300 library assistants, teacher assistants and behavioural intervention workers next year, and reduce the hours of nearly 300 more.

Instead, Haché announced he is trimming back the Innovative Learning Fund, a program introduced by Lamrock that provides grants for education projects.

The former education minister vehemently defended the fund until he was shifted to another post during last month's cabinet shuffle.

"We have to make sure that the best services are offered to the students in the classroom, so that the students can learn and the teachers can teach, and that is a priority for me," the new minister told reporters in Fredericton.

Haché cut the learning fund, valued at $5 million last year, to $1 million this year.

"I would say Mr. Lamrock is sad, but he understands," Haché said.

Brent Shaw, president of the New Brunswick Teachers Association, said the Innovative Learning Fund is a good idea in principle, but hardly the most effective use of limited resources.

"I think this was a clear move that needed to be done," Shaw told reporters Thursday following the announcement. "I believe the new minister listened to what the stakeholders had to say - not just the New Brunswick Teachers Union, but certainly all the stakeholders."

Shaw said he was pleased Haché kept $1 million in the fund to honour commitments to existing programs.

In 2008-2009, the Innovation Learning Fund supplied about $5 million for 502 projects in the anglophone school sector and 189 projects in the francophone school sector.

Projects have ranged in scope from the development of an online newspaper to the creation of an after-school program to improve literacy and math, at a cost of anywhere from $2,500 to $40,000.

The former education minister reduced the fund by $1.65 million earlier this spring, but ruled out eliminating the program entirely.

Lamrock now heads up the Department of Social Development.

If the cuts to school support staff hadn't been reversed, it was expected that some school libraries would have been forced to significantly reduce their hours when school resumes in September.

The cuts would also have had an impact on the classroom. Intervention workers, who help children with behavioural, social or emotional issues, and teacher assistants, who usually assist a child with special needs in the classroom, had received pink slips.

Experts worried that, by eliminating those positions, all students would have suffered because teachers would have had to devote more time to children with learning issues.

"The children are the real winners today, with the $2.9 million coming back," Sandy Harding told reporters following the announcement.

Harding is president of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 2745, which represents support staff workers.

Support staff will now return for another year - though not necessarily to the same classrooms. Haché said the shifting number of students in each school means that some will be re-assigned to new posts.

The Progressive Conservative's education critic Claude Landry, whose party had been calling on the Liberals to reverse the cuts for several months, accused the government of backtracking on another decision.

"They are revising this decision today, but why did they do it in the first place?" Landry said. "New Brunswickers are tired of this government flip-flopping."

The Education Department budget for 2009-10 is $963 million, an increase of $21 million over last year. It still needed to slash $23.8 million from its books because of an increase in teachers' wages under a new collective agreement and the cost of hiring about 200 new teachers.